Regionalization of a Model for Design Storms

A stochastic precipitation model, which is able to capture the main characteristics of heavy rainfalls in Liguria (northern Italy), has been examined to investigate the possibility to regionalize its parameters. The alternative between explicitly or implicitly taking into account the physical characteristics of a site (elevation, distance from the sea, exposition) directly or by means of the geographical coordinates has been considered. In this first approach, the comparison was restricted to the influence of elevation on the parameters of the model. It has been observed that better results have been obtained when the elevation is explicitly taken into account, even if the number of parameters of the interpolating function is lower. This seems to point out the other physical characteristics may also be regionalized explicitly, but with a greater difficulty to find an appropriate value.